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AFTARĪ

AFTARĪ, the dialect of Aftar (population about 1,200), located at lat 35°39′ N, long 53°07′ E in the mountains one kilometer west of the Semnān-Fīrūzkūh road to Māzandarān. Historical phonology shows Aftarī as a Northwest (i.e. non-Perside) dialect of Iranian, e.g., *v > v: varg “wolf;” *dv > b: bar “door;” *k > s: kasin “small;” *ĝ > z: yeze “yesterday;” *θr, fr, xr(h)r: pūr “son,” herān “tomorrow,” erin “buy;” note also a < *azam “I;” hūǰ < *yužam “you (pl.);” ǰūn < *hača-avān- “they” (an old possessive); vāž < *vāč “say.” Aftarī is closely related to Sorḵaʾī-Lāsgerdī; together with Sangesarī and Šahmīrzādī these dialects form a distinct semicircle around Semnān and are related to Ṭabarī/Māzandarānī and, more remotely, to Harzanī in north Azerbaijan and Zāzā in eastern Anatolia (note especially the use of the old present participle for the present indicative: *-ant- > -nd, and the shared assimilations *-r-nd- > -nn-, as in *kar-nd- > kenn- “do” and in *vāž-nd- > vānn- “say”). Aftarī with Sorḵaʾī and Lāsgerdī developed certain Sprachbund features with Semnānī, such as -išt- in the intransitive past and the use of personal suffixes in the transitive past.